Kal Tire Place (file photo/Vernon Matters)

By Pete McIntyre

loans repaid

Public facilities now debt free

Jan 15, 2024 | 5:00 AM

Kal Tire Place and the Vernon and District Performing Arts Centre, which both opened in 2001, have now both been fully paid for.

The last payment on the $14.7 million loan for Kal Tire Place was officially made in 2021, but the completion of the service with the Regional District of North Okanagan will officially end this year.

Greater Vernon Advisory Committee (GVAC) chair Bob Fleming said because interest rates went down over the course of the loan, RDNO ended up with a $300,000 dollar surplus which is being invested back into services in 2023 and 2024.

“It built up a reserve — we got money back from the municipal finance authority (MFA). That money has now been turned into a negative tax requisition over last year and this year. So in other words, that’s money going back to the taxpayer, so it’s coming off the budget in other areas,” Fleming told Vernon Matters.

Fleming said they got ‘super low” interest rates through MFA and got some money back.

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The GVAC chair, who is also RDNO’s Area B director, said the loan for the Performing Arts Centre was also paid off in 2021.

“The operating grant for that is lower now because we’re no longer paying a loan. It’s a couple hundred thousand dollars lower than it used to be,” Fleming explained.

Construction of the PAC was budgeted at $9.75 million and the project finished on time and under budget, according to the Vernon and District Performing Arts Society.

RDNO is still paying for Kal Tire Place North, which opened in 2018.

The debt servicing function for that began in 2017 when the regional district borrowed $13.1 million over 20 years to finance the new building with about $9.4 million still to pay off.

Updates on the facilities’ finances were outlined at GVAC’s special budget meeting last week.